Assoc. Prof. Ivailo Alexiev Ivanov is Head of the National Reference Confirmation Laboratory for HIV (NRCL of HIV) at NCIPD. In 1994 he graduated Biology with a degree in Cell Biology and Development at Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski”. His professional career began in 1995 with the diagnosis of blood-borne infections and HLA typing for stem cell transplantation in the UMHAT St. Anna and MHAT “N. Pirogov”. In 2003 he started working in the NRCL of HIV. In 2008 he specialized Clinical Virology. In 2011 he defended his doctoral dissertation entitled: "Molecular and virological characterization of the HIV-1 epidemic in Bulgaria through sequencing and phylogenetic analysis." In 2014 he became associate professor. Since 2016 he has been appointed head of the NRCL of HIV. Ivaylo Alexiev has completed a number of courses and specializations, including in the Department of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the CDC Atlanta, USA, Luxembourg, Italy, The Netherlands, Egypt and Greece. In 2018, a visiting researcher and Fulbright Fellow for research at the University of Florida, Institute for Emerging Pathogens.His main interests are related to HIV drug resistance and molecular epidemiology. His publishing activity is related to publications in prestigious scientific journals. He is a member of the European Association for Antiviral Resistance (ESAR), European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS), the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria and the Scientific Society of Virology in Bulgaria.Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he has been involved in research on the diagnosis, sequencing and analysis of the viral genome of the newly emerged SARS-CoV-2.